Northport, Alabama

What is it about dreams that strings us out and turns our worlds upside down?

I used to think it was the passion — the sheer want — that left me unglued and banging my head against the wall. Whether I was writing or shooting, when I was into it I was submerged head first — mind, body, and soul. It was wild, unbridled energy, all hot and no cold. It scared the hell out of me. I loved the speed but feared the crash, craved the high but dreaded the low.

In my twenties, I fed it with scant sleep and copius amounts of caffeine. For a while, it was my friend. I filled notebook after notebook with words, burned through so many rolls of film that I eventually started bulk loading it to save money. I was high-happy and the future was so bright that I was in danger of catching myself on fire with my own blind pursuit.

That was before. Before I learned fear. Before I learned loss. Before I learned failure. Before I learned that everything comes at a cost.

I tried to tame the need to create into something more manageable, more dilute. I told myself that I was still writing, still shooting. I tried to ignore the brown-eyed girl caught in her mirror world who gazed at me from the depths every morning.

“I’m still alive,” I would try to tell her.

“Yeah. Half alive and mostly dead,” she would spit back at me.

I tried to kill the want completely, but it leaked out in unexpected places. I didn’t write any more, I just tapped out 2,000 word emails filled with every ounce of passion and intensity I wasn’t putting on paper. I didn’t shoot anymore. I just created a harmless little website to keep my html skills up to par until I found something better to do.

The girl in the mirror wasn’t fooled, and she wasn’t sated either. She wanted more. She always wants more. Trapped in her sterile world of fragmented imagery and broken promises, she demands retribution. She always knew there was something better, and she expects me to find it. Pursue it. Chase it down and make it beg for mercy.

She expects me to live. Completely. Passionately. With wild abandon.

I have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The world awaits.

And silently, that girl in the mirror waits, too.

Posted on November 20, 2005 by Carmen K. Sisson tagged Alabama, fences, flowers, Northport, rural, writing